


Judgement

by Canaan



Series: Major Arcana [9]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Alternate Universe, Drama, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-22
Packaged: 2017-10-29 23:14:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/325238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canaan/pseuds/Canaan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose isn't ready to go home, not when she doesn't know how to tell her mum that she and the Doctor and Jack are an item. But she's going anyway. AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Here we are, for Poly Big Bang round 3, the long-delayed missing Major Arcana story! Yes, it's part of a series, but you can read it stand-alone with the aid of the background paragraph below. Falls between [Five Things Rose Tyler Will Never Tell Her Mum, and One She Must](http://archiveofourown.org/works/142053) and [The Devil](http://archiveofourown.org/works/144928/chapters/207181).
> 
> If you haven't read the series, here's what you need to know: the ninth Doctor did not regenerate at the end of series 1. He, Rose, and an immortal Jack Harkness are still traveling together, and Rose hasn't been home to see her mother since before she and the other two became lovers.
> 
> Please be sure and comment on the completely awesome artwork courtesy of wilde_stallyn on LJ [here on the artwork post](http://wilde-stallyn.livejournal.com/49356.html)\--artists need love the same as writers do. :-)
> 
> Quick heads up--the name Maile is pronounced "MY-lay."
> 
> BR by the always-fantastic Yamx, and special Hawai'ian pidgin beta by Mr. Alexander. I've made changes since then, so any remaining mistakes are All My Fault. Disclaimer: I don't own anybody but Maile and the inevitable aliens, and I'm not making any money.

  


Rose had quit taking her mobile out of the TARDIS with her the first time she forgot to put it on silent mode and it buzzed in the middle of one of the Doctor's "Oncoming Storm" speeches. She'd thought that if she were ever facing certain death, she might want to say goodbye to her mum. The way the Doctor looked at her when the bloody thing went off--even on vibrate--had made her think death could be a lot more certain at the hands of her irate partner. So the mobile wasn't mobile; it hung from their wardrobe handle in a sock, so it wouldn't slide off the top of the bureau when the TARDIS bounced around.

When they'd tumbled back into the TARDIS after seeing the fifty-second century's largest circus safe from two Miaralets that weren't cut out for the performing life ("No such thing as tame Miaralets," the Doctor said. "They just project tameness on a low-level telepathic band until they're hungry."), her voicemail was the last thing on her mind. After a trip to the medbay for her sprained ankle and another to the kitchen, the topmost thing on Rose's mind was how edible her two blokes looked. In fact, she had her shirt off and an enthusiastic Jack wrapped around her ribs while the Doctor snogged her breathless before they heard the the mobile's annoying chirp: the one that reminded her she had voicemail every five minutes till she told it not to.

"Oh, bollocks," Rose muttered.

"Ignore it," Jack suggested. "It's not going anywhere."

She began trying to extricate herself. "Could be my mum," she pointed out.

"She's not going anywhere either."

The Doctor snorted. "I'll just be a tick," Rose said, wiggling away. "Don't start without me?"

"No promises," Jack purred, but there was a hint of laughter in his voice. Rose untied the sock and fished her phone out, watching him advance on the Doctor and the Doctor back up until the bed impeded their progress. She snickered and pressed buttons as the Doctor sat down abruptly. Jack put a knee on either side of their lover's lap, pinning him there and leaning in for a kiss.

Mickey's voice said into Rose's ear, "Rose? If you lot are all right . . . I really need you here. It's your mum. Something's wrong, and she _seems_ all right, but . . . she's not like this, you know? And it's not just her . . . " Mickey's voice went on, but Rose wasn't hearing it. What could happen to her mum at the Powell Estate? _Animated shop dummies?_ a small voice in the back of her head pointed out. But why wouldn't Jackie have called her? _I shouldn't have stayed away this long._ She tuned in again just in time to hear Mickey's message say, "Call me soon, okay? Thanks."

Rose closed the phone with a plastic-sounding snap and stared numbly at her partners, who had stopped what they were doing to stare back. "We have to go home," she said.

The Doctor looked pained. "Now?" he asked.

Rose nodded. "Something's the matter with my mum."

"Did she say what?" Jack asked. He looked torn between concern and a profound desire to lick the Doctor's earlobe, and underneath all that, he looked tired.

He always looked tired, since Culabree, and she hated that there was nothing she could do about it. "It wasn't her, it was Mickey. Jack, this can't wait--it's my _mum_." Rose tucked the mobile into the back pocket of her shorts and grabbed her shirt off the floor.

The Doctor spilled Jack to one side on the bed. "Right. How soon do you want to get there, then?" He got to his feet.

Being the Doctor, it seemed like he should have been protesting more, but then, he'd been waiting for her to be ready for this visit for awhile. _I'm not ready,_ Rose thought, pulling the phone out again and handing it over. _I don't know how to handle this, but I can't just wait to figure out my love life while something's wrong with Mum._ "Soon after that?" she asked.

The Doctor nodded. "Jack, best put on some jeans--the twenty-first century's not really on about leather trousers." He opened the phone and pulling out his sonic screwdriver.

Thank goodness the Doctor was paying attention, Rose thought as Jack sighed and walked over to the wardrobe. Rose dragged her shirt on and reached for her hairbrush.

"So did you decide how you want to tell her?" Jack asked.

The hairbrush stilled. "No idea," she muttered. "I need to see what's wrong with her first. If she's in the hospital or somethin', I don't want to shock her."

The Doctor's hand settled on her shoulder and gave a reassuring squeeze. "Right, then. We'd best go see what Mickey-the-Idiot's on about."

***

"If I never have to grade another freshman essay again, it'll be too soon." Cora stared blankly into the refrigerator. "I want to shake the snot-nosed brats and tell them that if they don't know what to do with a semicolon, they shouldn't be using one."

"Bugger your semicolons," Maile told her flatmate, stepping out of her shoes by the door and wriggling her toes happily. "The results might be wrong, but at least they're interesting. I didn't realize I was going to spend half my assistantship sterilizing glassware."

"Bugger them? Do you have any idea how funny that sounds in an American accent?" Cora pulled out two bottles of cider. She opened them, tossing the caps in the bin before handing Maile one.

The bottle was already sweating by the time Maile pressed it to her forehead. Which made it a fine match for her skin, she supposed. She'd have worried about wandering around reeking, but everyone else in the city was in the same sticky boat. Everyone who didn't own a car, anyway. "Says the woman who told me I didn't wear 'pants'." She took a long pull from her bottle and considered the kitchen window. If she took a knife to it where it had been painted shut, they might be able to finally lever it open. On the other hand, every other window in the flat was open--one more probably wouldn't help any. "I could've told you to close your eyes and think of England. I'm a science geek; I'm not completely illiterate."

Cora strolled past her into the living room and flopped down on the ghastly floral sofa beneath the front windows. "I shall think, instead," she announced, "on that happy day when I have a dozen publications under my belt and you're back in Hawai'i doing pure research, and we have grad students of our own to grade papers and sterilize glassw-- Ow! Little bastard!"

The resounding _smack_ that went with the exclamation stopped Maile on her way toward the tacky green side chair Cora's sister had foisted off on them. Looking slantwise at her friend, Maile found Cora inspecting a bottle-green smear on the pale skin of her hand. "What 'ow'? They don't bite and they can't sting."

"Says you," Cora complained, looking from the smear to the red mark where she'd slapped her arm. "'Who knows not where a wasp does wear his sting?'"

"Says me," Maile agreed. "I study them. When I'm not sterilizing glassware." She settled into the chair.

"'In his tail'!" Cora held her cider bottle against the supposed sting. "Yours is in an air-conditioned building all day. _I_ have been sitting here with the windows open for hours, grading. Trust me, they sting."

"They're harmless pollinators, Cora. Kind of pretty. No stingers, I promise."

"'In his tongue'!" Cora tried, waving the hand with the smashed bug around for emphasis. She sipped from her cider.

Maile rolled her eyes. "Gods save me from sloshed MFAs. How many of those did you have before I got home?"

Cora focused on her and blinked. "That's a funny thing to ask. You know I don't drink and deride. Er, grade--but let's face it, the only fun part of that is the mocking of freshmen."

Maile felt a sharp pain on the back of her neck, under her ponytail. She reached for it, reflexively grabbing the determined little insect and trying not to flatten it in the process of getting a good look at it. She wasn't entirely successful, but enough to confirm that it was, in fact, a false bottle fly. It waved two legs feebly, and she put it out of its misery. "You're not supposed to bite," she told it, leaving her cider on the end table and walking back into the kitchen to wash green bug splat off brown skin. She looked back to the bottle on the end table, regretfully. "You can finish my cider, Cora," she said, going for her backpack.

"Where are you off to?"

Maile shrugged and collected her shoes. "I need some new specimens."

***

Nothing else made a noise quite like the TARDIS's engines. Jackie swore that sound would be forever lodged in her brain--right beneath whatever bit made adrenaline. She heard it in her dreams, sometimes--the bad ones, mostly, where Rose showed up in trouble, or the Doctor carried her out of the TARDIS hurt. Now it dragged her right out of the argument with Mickey. She left a box of biscuits open on the counter and ran for the flat's door, not slamming it only because Mickey was on her heels.

Not that she wasn't put out with him right now, but it wasn't enough to make her really want to break his nose.

The TARDIS's door was open and Rose was outside by the time Jackie reached the street, sweat sticking her fringe to her for head in the moist, miserable heat. The Doctor popped out of his box, followed by another bloke, but Jackie couldn't be bothered waiting on introductions. She swept Rose into the world's biggest hug--and had it returned. "Thank God you're all right. What was that, missy--couldn't be bothered with anythin' more than a 'We're okay and I'll see you later'?" And then nothing for _months_? Don't _do_ that to me!"

Rose squirmed in her arms like she was seven. "We're fine, mum, it just took awhile. Didn't mean it to be so long, really. How 'bout you? Are _you_ okay?"

The question rubbed her entirely the wrong way just then. Jackie let Rose draw away, leaving her hands on her daughter's shoulders and studying her face. "'Course I am. Why wouldn't I be?" she asked, with an unhappy suspicion she knew the answer. When Rose studied her in return, Jackie turned her head to glare at Mickey, standing just beside her on the pavement. "You called her, didn't you?"

Mickey took half a step back under the force of the glare and held his hands up in front of him. "Oi, look at it this way—you wanted to see her, right?"

Jackie let go of Rose. "Mickey Smith, if--"

"Mum!" Rose interrupted. "What's wrong? Why're you all hacked off at Mickey?"

Jackie stopped, suddenly. She looked back at Rose. " _Mickey_ thinks I'm mental," she said tartly.

"Can't imagine why," the Doctor said.

Jackie pushed past Rose to give him a piece of her mind, wishing she looked more imposing and less like her makeup was running down her face in the heat. She settled her hands on her hips and said, "And I suppose you think it's funny, keepin' her away for months on end. She's my _daughter_ , can't you get that through that alien head of yours? What do they do, grow people from sprouts on your planet, that you don't understand this? You've never been a parent! And gallivanting around in that blue box with no one else to see--who knows what goes on?"

The Doctor's scowl might've impressed other people, but not Jackie Tyler. She knew what was right, and this wasn't _right_.

"Why, Jackie Tyler," a man's voice purred, "did you just accuse him of asexual reproduction and of taking advantage of Rose's virtue in the same breath? Not that the two are mutually exclusive, but still, that's far more creativity than the 21st-century usually gets away with. That's got to give you points for style."

Jackie turned a little to find the most gorgeous man she'd ever seen in person smiling at her. She softened and smiled back, wishing she were wearing a different blouse. "And who might _you_ be?" she asked.

Rose shot her half a look, but mostly, she was too busy whispering with Mickey and the Doctor to step in and do proper introductions. "Captain Jack Harkness, ma'am." He had the bluest eyes. And that chin . . . oh, Jackie did like a man with a strong jaw. "Rose has told me so much about you, it feels like we've already met."

***

"That captain friend of yours is just lovely," Jackie said. Rose cringed and wiped the back of her arm along her forehead so she wouldn't sweat onto the cheese she was chopping. It was way too hot for London in the spring. "And I don't just mean he's gorgeous, though he is, isn't he? I mean . . . "

Under other circumstances, Rose would have been thrilled that her mum was interested in someone like Jack. And Jack was probably closer to Mum's age than her own . . . but he was taken. He was _hers_ , hers and the Doctor's.

And Mum wasn't in her right mind, according to Mickey. "Yeah, Jack's great," Rose said. "But we aren't here for him, we're here for me, and for you. I'm sorry it took so long. How have things been here?"

It was exactly the right question. Jackie spent the next fifteen minutes complaining about the local yobs messing about with the garbage and playing silly buggers at all hours of the night, the lift that always got fixed but never _stayed_ fixed, her best friend Bernice's new boyfriend, and other things Rose couldn't have cared less about except that it gave her a chance to listen to her mum, really listen. And Mickey was right, something was just _wrong_ with her. She just . . . swung too wide. She loved too hard, hated too much, and didn't know what the world was coming to while she chopped cucumbers for sandwiches so hard Rose didn't want to get her fingers anywhere near there, slammed cupboards, and generally used far too much force assembling tea as they sweated together in the small kitchen.

 _It's like she's drunk. But Mickey swears she's been like this for days. She's got no patience for that kind of drinking--she had no sympathy when I drank myself sick after Jimmy took off._

And there was no reasoning with her; Mickey had proved that outside.

Not that Mickey was doing so well himself. Mum had been driving him barmy, and it sounded like he'd just run out of patience: with her, with work, with everything. He'd been giving the Doctor an earful about how long they'd been gone out in the living room when Rose had followed Jackie into the kitchen to make tea. Not that she could blame him--the heat was enough to make anyone cross. Just as well she'd worn shorts to the circus earlier today. She was sticky already, and the flies that had got into the flat seemed determined to get up under her hair where it stuck to her neck. She swatted at one absently.

She hoped the Doctor would have some better ideas about what was wrong by the time they all sat down for tea, or it was going to be a very uncomfortable meal.

Rose hadn't had to say more than two words to her mother by the time they had the sandwiches on plates and the biscuits ready to follow. They walked into the living room, where Mickey had turned on the telly. She couldn't imagine how blokes were playing football in this weather--just watching it made her feel out of sorts.

Jack and the Doctor exchanged a look: warning on Jack's part and annoyed on the Doctor's. Rose didn't know what that was all about, but she had a nagging feeling she was about to find out as the Doctor got up from the sofa and walked toward them. Rose set the biscuits down on the coffee table and took the plate of sandwiches from her mum as the Doctor pulled his sonic screwdriver out, pointing it at Jackie.

"Oi, you can just point that somewhere else, mister!" Jackie shook her finger at him, making Rose glad she'd rescued the sandwiches. She put them down next to the biscuits.

The Doctor raised his screwdriver, looking at it as if it had some kind of readout Rose could never see. "Jackie Tyler, something is very wrong with your brain."


	2. Chapter 2

"Jackie Tyler, something is very wrong with your brain."

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, the Doctor knew he'd made a mistake. Not that he was wrong--his screwdriver couldn't give him much information, but enough to be utterly sure that more was wrong with Jackie Tyler than just being Jackie Tyler could account for. No, the mistake was letting Jackie know. Her complexion slowly darkened past pink until it verged on red.

The Doctor took two steps backward out of slapping range. Jack got up and patted his shoulder, which at least gave the Doctor something to glare at. Something really was wrong with Rose's mum, and Jack was patronizing him!

Jackie drew back her hand. Grabbing her mother by the wrist, Rose said, "Mum, it's beastly hot in here. Why don't we pack up the sandwiches and go outside for a picnic, yeah?"

The Doctor sighed with relief as Jackie focused on her, temper subsiding with the distraction. "A picnic? What a lovely idea. Can't remember the last time we had a picnic, you and me. I think you were in primary school . . . "

"Jack," Rose said, "could you get the hamper from the TARDIS? I think we left it in the kitchen, but it might have gone back into Storage Four."

Jack flashed her an unperturbed grin. "Always happy to do a favor for a beautiful woman."

Jackie batted her eyelashes. Rose looked vaguely unnerved.

Jack, the Doctor thought, was probably happy enough just to get out of the Tyler living room. Which, come to that, might not be the worst idea in the universe just now. "Think I'll go run this data through a proper scanner . . . "

"Oh no you don't," Rose said, taking three steps to where she could poke his chest with her finger. He kept his face blank. "I know how this works. You'll run back into the TARDIS, find some problem you need to tinker with, and we won't see you again until we're ready to leave. Picnic. Now. With Mum."

The Doctor looked at Jack, silently hoping his partner could help him come up with an excuse to make his escape.

Jack just grinned. "I wouldn't argue with her if I were you, Doc." He slipped out the door, and Rose planted both hands on the Doctor's chest, pushing him gently but firmly back onto the sofa.

The Doctor watched mournfully as she and Jackie returned to the kitchen to wrap up sandwiches and biscuits. Mickey looked up from the football game long enough to say, "I'd be awfully careful what you say just now, mate. The way Jackie's been lately, I never know what'll set her off. And she _likes_ me."

"Something really _is_ wrong." The Doctor stared at his screwdriver as if it could somehow tell him more than it already had.

Jack's eyes narrowed. "Like 'rush-to-the-A&E' wrong?" He looked toward the kitchen.

Sighing, the Doctor shook his head. "Her brain's producing alpha waves at ridiculous levels, and no increase in theta waves to go with them. It's bizarre, but it's not hurting her--just making her hard to be around."

"You can say that again," Mickey muttered.

"Need to get her into the TARDIS if we want a better idea what's going on--screwdriver can't tell much more than the kind of brain scan humans can do with their own equipment in this century."

Jack slung an arm over his shoulders. "Somehow, I don't see that happening while Rose thinks you're just trying to get out of tea with her mum. Safer to wait it out."

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "And dull."

Mickey gave a short laugh. "Only if you're lucky."

Once Rose had packed the picnic hamper, they were all made to tromp down the stairs and off to a local park like a good little kiddies. It was appallingly domestic and completely unnecessary, especially when he really did want to find out what was wrong with Jackie. She was insufferable enough on a regular basis; he didn't want to imagine what bringing Rose home for visits would be like if they couldn't get this sorted.

Jack laid the blanket out on the ground while Jackie nattered on and Mickey and the Doctor both did their best to be invisible. The fact that he and Mickey actually had something in common was almost more disturbing than Jackie's prefrontal cortical activity.

"Ow," Rose complained, dropping the picnic hamper to slap at one bare arm with the opposite hand. "Leave it to us to come home at some random time, and it's in the middle of black fly season."

"They've been awful," Mickey said. "Started up a few days ago."

"Nothing keeps them off, either." Jackie grabbed the hamper and sat down on the blanket, opening it and beginning to set out the food. "I've tried everything. No worse here than indoors, not with having to keep all the windows open in the heat."

"Could put up fly screens," the Doctor pointed out, wondering how long he'd have to play nice for Rose's benefit before he could convince her they ought to get her mum into the TARDIS.

"Never been worth the money," Rose said, but she smiled at him and walked over to bump his hip with hers. Which was gratifying, but a bit peculiar, since she didn't want Jackie to know he was more than just the crazy fellow with the time machine. "It's not like you need them most of the year." She sat down next to her mum.

Jack sat beside her. "No diseases to get transmitted that way?"

"Not in this country, not really " Mickey said, flinging himself down on the grass.

Jack grunted. "Lucky country."

Rose grinned and planted a peck on his cheek before stretching out so she could lay her head in his lap.

That was twice in five minutes--not that Jackie seemed to have noticed, lucky for all of them. On a hunch, the Doctor brought out his screwdriver again, this time aiming it at Rose. Her readings weren't anything like Jackie's, but the alpha waves were higher than they ought to be.

Jack swatted a fly. The Doctor scanned him as well. Great, whatever it was was catching amongst humans. All of a sudden, the Doctor had bigger problems than Jackie Tyler. "What causes a dramatic increase in alpha waves but doesn't increase the theta waves along with it?"

Jack looked over at him. "Don't look at me, Doc--hit me on temporal physics or something I've got a fighting chance with." He grinned. "Better still, come over here and join us."

The Doctor gave him a sharp look. "If I didn't know better, Jack, I'd say you'd been drinking."

Jack laughed. "Come on, you've seen me drunk. It's a beautiful day, the sun is shining, I'm with some of my favorite people--I'm relaxed. What's wrong with being relaxed?"

"Now I'm for that," Jackie said. "Who wants cucumber and who wants cheese?"

The Doctor never caught an answer, distracted by a young woman a few years older than Rose walking right past their blanket. She held a net in one hand and what looked oddly like a large test tube that had grown antennae in the other. "Come out, come out, wherever you are," she said in an American accent shifted broadly toward . . . Hawai'ian? She ran the net over a clump of flowers. "Come on, Maile gonna study you."

"What are you looking for?" the Doctor asked, walking over to join her.

She turned around so quickly her long brown ponytail slapped across his jacket. "Don't sneak up on a person like that. You could give a girl one heart attack."

The Doctor nodded down at her net, where an assortment of discommoded insects were crawling around and preparing to escape.

"Oh!" She put one of the test tube's antennae-thin copper pipe, the Doctor observed—into the net and held the other to her lips. Her cheeks hollowed, and one little insect after another was sucked into the test tube. But not all of them, the Doctor noticed. She only wanted certain ones.

Somewhere behind him, Jack called, "Doctor? Did you want tea?"

The Doctor waved him off. "What do you call them?" he asked.

She straightened up, apparently satisfied with her take, and held up the test tube so she could look inside it. A rubber stopper at the top contained the handful of little green bugs. "False bottle flies. They don't bite, only suddenly they do. And dem made my roommate drunk!" Her indignation would have been comical except . . .

He pointed his screwdriver at her head, unsurprised by the readings. Of course, the flies. Just in the last few days, and Rose and Jack were only just beginning to show signs of the same symptoms. "They made you drunk, too."

The woman nodded seriously. "Whatevah. I can do entomology drunk. I can do entomology in my sleep. I wanted to study bugs ever since I was a little girl. When I wen go away to college, my Tutu, she say, 'Maile, why you wanna go away to study bugs? You stay here and study bugs. Got plenty cockaroach right here.'"

The Doctor tried to take the test tube out of her hand, but she pulled it away. "Your name is Maile?"

She nodded. "Maile Kalua. Entomologist. Well, soon. When my thesis is _pau_."

"Nice to meet you, Maile. I'm the Doctor. Why don't we go find out what your bugs are doing to people? My lab's this way." He waved back in the direction of the TARDIS.

She gave him an exaggerated suspicious look. "Oh no, no postdoc gonna cockaroach my research."

His jaw fell open. "Steal your research? Wait a minute--postdoc!" He wasn't sure which offended him more.

"If you wanna share my bugs, we use my lab. Come on."

***

Rose swallowed a bite of cucumber sandwich. "So what happened with Howard?"

"Who's Howard?" Jack asked.

Jackie finished chewing while Rose said, "She was seeing him when I was here last--you know, when Himself sent me back from the Game Station without so much as a by-your-leave?" She clapped her hand over her mouth, remembering what else had happened on the Game Station, and how much harder it had been for Jack than for her afterward.

Fortunately, Jack only nodded and bit back a yawn.

"Oh, things just kind of . . . petered out." Jackie looked distant. "We're still friendly, but . . . "

 _But he's not Dad,_ Rose finished the thought. Not that Mum would ever say it, but it was that same look she always wore when they went through Dad's old photos. It was strange to see her sitting there, so sad and vulnerable, out in public. Jackie Tyler always believed in putting on a brave face.

"Friendly is good," Jack said with a cheerful leer at Rose. When she scowled at him, he turned it on Mickey instead.

"Oi! There's friendly and then there's friendly, and you're _too_ friendly, Captain Flash."

"It's bigger on the inside," Jack said.

Rose nearly choked on a bite of sandwich. She elbowed him. "Enough with the flirting. What's wrong with you, Jack?"

He grinned broadly. "I don't know--did you want to examine me and find out? Or the Doctor can do that once he's sorted your mother."

"I do _not_ need sorting!" Jackie glared at him for several moments before shifting her eyes to Mickey. "And that goes double for you, you snitch."

Mickey rolled his eyes. "And what else was I supposed to do, tie you to the bonnet and drive into the A&E?"

"Mickey!" Rose stared, surprised at the show of temper directed at her mum. Mickey got that angry, yeah, but mostly only at the Doctor, not at Jackie. Even after she'd spent a year hating him, Mickey got over it. Mickey was good that way. "What's wrong with you?"

"Popular question," Jack said with a grin.

It was. If something was wrong with Jack, and something was wrong with Mickey, and something was wrong with her mother . . . Rose might be the only one unaffected. Looking around, she couldn't spot the Doctor anywhere. "He picked a fine time to wander off," she muttered.

***

"This can't be right." Maile frowned into her magnifier. "Mouthparts, antennae, thorax, both sets of wings, abdomen--it's all the same. I thought maybe it was a new variant, but the morphology is exactly what I already documented. It's not fair." She knew, in a vague sort of way, that fairness had nothing to do with science, but it _wasn't_ fair, dammit. "I could look at the genitalia, but it's not like they're biting people with those."

"What about the insides?" the Doctor asked. Just "the Doctor," like he didn't have a sensible name. That wasn't fair, either--she had too many doctors running around getting in her way already. Though not as many as undergrads. "Maybe there's an internal change, something they're secreting now that they weren't before?"

"We could dissect one under a stereo microscope," Maile said dubiously. "I don't know what the organs have to do with anything, though. It's the teeth that are dangerous. Well, mouthparts."

The Doctor stopped pacing like she'd said something brilliant--further proof that he couldn't be more than a postdoc, even though he looked old enough to be her father. "Of course, doesn't have to do with anything. If we identified the agent, there still wouldn't be enough for complex sampling--I'd do better sifting it out of people's bloodstreams. But that's not the point."

She gave him a blank look. "What da point?"

He grinned so suddenly the change in expression almost gave her whiplash. "Not really looking at bugs, are we?"

Maybe he was drunk, too. "Yes we are. Trust me, I know bugs when I see them."

"We're looking at a very sophisticated distribution vector for whatever it is that's making people act drunk. Maile, you've been studying them. Why?"

She shrugged. "It's not very often you get the chance to study something entirely new without squelching through a South American forest in hip waders, hoping you find something worth observing before something else finds you and makes you lunch."

He went back to pacing. "They're new. Where did they come from?"

She shrugged. "Hey, I documented the morphology, and I've been trying to figure out which ones are the fertile females. I haven't even designed the tracking experiment yet."

"No time like the present." He grabbed her hand and tugged her away from her lab table. "They didn't spontaneously generate--they've got to come from somewhere."

"You're thinking of maggots," she said reflexively, getting to her feet, "and they don't spontaneously generate, either."

He had that strange instrument in his hand again, the one that looked like a blue LED on the end of half an egg whisk and sounded like somebody's bad 1960s idea of a science-fiction sound effect. "We're going to track them back to their hive," he announced.

"We don't even know if they _have_ hives." She grabbed her backpack with her free hand, slinging it up on one shoulder.

"Let's find out." He dragged her out of the entomology lab and down to the pavement below, waving the instrument in front of him like a magic wand.

"What is that, anyway?" she asked as he let go of her hand to turn in a slow circle, as if he were an antenna trying to get a fix on something.

"Sonic screwdriver."

It didn't look like a screwdriver. "How you drive screws with sound?"

"Practice." A sudden grin lit his face. "Here we go, come on!"

Like she had a choice, with him dragging her along by the hand. They pelted down the pavement, and it was all she could do to keep up with his longer legs. She certainly didn't have the breath to ask questions, though if she had, she might have wished aloud that he were tracking a false bottle fly with the good sense to carry an oyster card.

After more running than she'd ever wanted to do in her life, they ended up skulking around a couple of old warehouses. There were certainly plenty of false bottle flies trying to make a meal out of her. She slapped at one on her elbow just as the Doctor said, "Ha! Found you!"

"What you wen find?" She looked up to see him merrily screwdriver-ing a hole in the side of the building. "Are they in there? Is there really a hive?" She shoved in beside him, trying to get a good look into the darkened space without being so close that agitated false bottle flies would swarm her. They didn't exhibit swarming behaviors, but then again, they didn't bite, either, except today, they did.

She had just about chased that train of thought all the way to its caboose when someone said, "I don't suppose you'd like to tell me what you're doing snooping around?"

"This is a scientific investigation." Maile wished she didn't sound so much like a drunken undergrad trying to be serious, but the damn bugs made everything she said sound melodramatic and like she was trying too hard. She straightened up, summoning what was left of her dignity, and turned to find three very irate-looking security guards with guns giving her stink-eye. The very rational explanation for their research flew promptly out of her head. "Um."

"You seem to have an infestation," the Doctor said. He was still staring at his screwdriver-thingy, oblivious to their discovery.

"Doctor. Turn around."

"Hmm?" He glanced over at her. "Why?"

The guard in the center cleared his throat. "Because I'm afraid you're going for a little walk with us. Whether you want to or not."


	3. Chapter 3

Cora always made such a big deal about guns in American TV shows, but Maile had never been held at gunpoint back home. It didn't have much to recommend it. As the security guards marched them around the side of the warehouse, she asked the Doctor, "Aren't those things illegal here?"

"And yet that never seems to stop anybody." He sounded almost cheerful, following the guard in front of them up to a side door. She glanced up at him as the guard opened the door. He might sound cheerful, but the look on his face was colder than the London winters--no matter how much Cora laughed when Maile complained about them.

Inside, the warehouse looked less like a warehouse and more like her lab . . . if her lab were staffed by six foot tall mottled green meerkats in lab coats. She stopped dead and stared, vaguely aware that her mouth was hanging open, but at a loss to do much about it. She tried rubbing her eyes, but it didn't change anything. "They're . . . they're aliens."

The Doctor said, "Yup," just as something poked her in the back. Gun barrel. She shuddered.

"Oi, that's Krriktarichs, if you don't mind," said a woman--probably a woman, anyway; she had something shaped about like human breasts under her blouse and lab coat. She straightened up from a large piece of machinery Maile couldn't identify. "Kast, is there any particular reason you brought them in here instead of running them off?"

The guard in front of them stepped to one side, touching a black box clipped to his belt. He fuzzed out like a bad special effect and turned into one of the aliens. Maile blinked and forced herself to remember the guns, because she was sure the guards behind her were doing it, too, and she had the absurd urge to reach out and touch one of them to see if the fur was real. "The tall one had this, Tally," the guard said, taking the Doctor's screwdriver out of a pocket and brandishing it for her to see.

"And I'd like it back, if it's all the same to you." The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Just came here to talk to you about your bugs, and suddenly it's all guns and people taking my screwdriver."

Tally stared at the screwdriver. Maile thought she might be frowning as she came closer, but who knew what a frown looked like for the aliens? Krickters? Kricktarks? When she was close enough, Tally took it from the guard and examined it. "Sonic?"

Kast never had a chance to answer. "Yeah. I'm the Doctor, and this is Maile Kalua. Now can we lose the guns?" the Doctor asked. "Came here to talk, us, and we do that much better when nobody's pointing guns at us."

Tally dropped the screwdriver into the pocket of her lab coat and made a shooing motion with one hand. "What's this about bugs?"

The hard spot in the center of Maile's back disappeared, and she breathed a sigh of relief. "The false bottle flies."

"Your delivery system," the Doctor said casually. "They're making quite a lot of people out there act awfully erratic. Why?"

Tally cocked her head. After a moment, she said, "I suppose there's no harm in telling you--it's not like you'll believe this really happened later anyway."

Maile made a rude noise. "I'm drunk, but I'm not that drunk."

"So tell," the Doctor prompted. "We tracked them here. Don't know if it's your main facility, but it's at least a major production site. They go out, they bite, they come back here for more of the drug. Drug?"

Tally shrugged. "Close. They get their programming here. Have to come back on a regular basis to make sure there haven't been any changes. And of course, there's some attrition amongst the population--that's bound to happen when you use insects as your injection system."

The Doctor nodded--like anything about this made any sense! "So you're trying to blanket the city?"

"They aren't a local phenomenon," Maile said. "They're across the UK."

"Well, this island," Tally corrected. "We thought that was enough to make sure everyone would doubt their eyes and pass the newscasts off as a hoax."

"Wait a minute, being drunk is a hoax?" Maile shook her head. "How you figga?"

"That's only Phase 1," Tally said. "But I've answered your questions, Doctor and now it's time for you to answer mine. How does a human come to have sonic technology?"

Just watching the Doctor roll his eyes made Maile dizzy. "Not human, am I? Time Lord, me."

Tally jerked a little, and Maile could hear the guards still behind her shuffling their feet. "Don't be silly. There aren't any Time Lords left--if they were ever more than a legend. Now try again. Where did you get the sonic technology, and who sent you?"

"Count the hearts." The Doctor brushed by her, ignoring the guns, and walked between tables holding lab equipment. "You goin' to tell me you don't have a basic bioscanner here somewhere?"

Tally stared after him, a pinched kind of look on her face. "You're really a Time Lord?"

"Yup."

She worried her lower lip between her teeth. "Zaire, scan his cardiovascular system."

One of the aliens jumped off his lab stool and walked over to a vaguely mushroom-shaped device. Maile itched to go have a look at it, but she couldn't forget the guns. After waving the device at the Doctor for a moment, a hologram--a genuine, honest-to-gods hologram--sprang into being in the open part of the lab.

Maile might not be studying _human_ biology, but she could recognize two hearts. "You're an alien, too!" She felt absurdly pleased with herself. "Dat explains plenny." He wouldn't steal her research after all--not unless aliens had the same thesis requirements she was subject to.

Tally continued staring at the hologram for a minute. "Oh, hell, we didn't mean-- How did we--?" She closed her mouth so abruptly Maile heard her teeth snap together.

It was kind of gratifying, really. "That's better," Maile said. "Now let's figure out how to make my flatmate un-drunk."

"Kast, give the Doctor his screwdriver back." Tally's voice was strained. "Doctor, let's discuss this in my office. I think I need a cuppa."

Tally's office was an enclosed area at the front end of the warehouse, containing a desk, two extra chairs, and a cupboard with an electric kettle sitting on top. It took her three tries to turn the kettle on, and Maile said, "You should sit down," in the same moment Kast, now minus his gun, said, "I'll get that, Tally."

The Doctor paced along the side of the room while Tally sat in her chair behind the desk. Since the Doctor wasn't going to sit anyway, Maile took a seat. Kast stood by the kettle, pulling teacups out of the cupboard and fiddling with them in that way you fiddled with something when you were trying to be invisible so the arguing professors wouldn't tell you to get lost--or worse, ask you what you thought.

Between rapid, shallow breaths, Tally muttered, "I never realized--I mean, we were so careful. That was the whole point of developing the hallucinogenic agent and spending the time producing and distributing the injection insects. A Class 5 world that's not ready to believe the evidence of its own eyes where life beyond its star system is concerned . . . " The words seemed to spill out of her lips like she couldn't stop them. Did aliens hyperventilate? "We didn't want to risk disrupting native development of spaceflight. That kind of thing can bring down sanctions from the allied worlds, or if you're really unlucky, the Time Agency shows up and disappears you. How could we have done so much damage that the Time Lords--"

"What's a Time Lord," Maile interrupted her, "and why are they scary?"

She caught a glimpse of the pained look on the Doctor's face as he paced by. "Lucky you'll never find out. They're gone now. Lot of people think we're just a myth."

The kettle must still have been warm; the water was already boiling. Kast poured the tea and asked everyone about milk and sugar. His hands shook slightly. She wondered, vaguely, about the use of tea as a comfort ritual. None of them in this room were even British.

The Doctor didn't take tea, explaining while Kast handed Maile a cup. "My par– companions are human, and I don't think much of your lot drugging them, Tally, and leaving them to run into walls or set the kitchen on fire. Had you even thought about the traffic accidents you must be causing?"

Tally looked faintly abashed over the rim of her teacup. "We knew there would be some consequences, Doctor, but it seemed better than the alternative. Aliens on a rescue mission in the middle of London? We'd never get away with it--what we're doing is just too big."

Something tugged at Maile's subconscious as she sipped her tea. Tally had said something about the false bottle flies. Injector insects . . . "Wait a minute, you said hallucinogenic. My flatmate's drunk, but she's not hallucinating. Or she wasn't when I left." She frowned at Tally, trying to make the leap from drunk to hallucinating while she was bug-drunk herself. Bug-drunk. Was that even a word?

"Of course not," Kast said, still standing beside the tea kettle and gesturing with his cup. "We've only just activated the signal to release the Phase 2 catalyst."

The Doctor's gaze skewered Kast, who shrank back from it. "Phase 2 catalyst?"

Tally nodded. "The hallucinations should start any minute now."

***

The Doctor still hadn't turned up, which would worry Jack more if it weren't such a fine, warm day out. This was a public park; it wasn't like his partner was wandering the halls on Arcturus Prime Tertius this time. And Jack knew Rose was concerned about her mother, but he couldn't see anything wrong with Jackie Tyler. Anything at all--the yoga pants didn't flatter her, but she was a fine figure of a mature woman.

Rose elbowed him. "Oi, eyes where they belong."

He turned his head, giving her an appreciative up-and-down look before snaking his arm around her waist. "You're sure I can't kiss you?" he whispered.

She started to say yes, he could see it on her lips, but then remembered herself. Tangling her fingers in his, she moved his hand off her hip. "Hands, Jack."

He caught Jackie frowning at him and smiled in reply. "You can't blame a guy for trying."

Rose giggled.

Jackie's expression lightened. "Jack, you seem to know how to take a load off and be proper company for a while. What are you doing traveling with him?" No question who "him" was.

"Same as me," Rose said. "There's so much to see out there. It's great to come back and visit you, Mum, but we'll always want to go back."

"Not to mention, he--" Jack stopped even before Rose's elbow connected with his ribs again, harder this time. The sound of way too many heavy boots marching in lockstep came clear in his ears. He looked around, trying to pin down their direction, pulling his feet underneath him so he was ready to move.

"What is it?" Rose whispered. He glanced over to see her doing the same.

Fifty-first century genes--his hearing was a little better than hers. "Boots. Maybe not an army's worth, but a lot." The other side of that little stand of trees, he decided. A moment later, the first soldiers came into view, their six-legged silhouettes and purple battle armor unmistakable. "Arcturians. What the hell are Arcturians doing on Earth?"

Rose swallowed. "I don't know, but we need to find the Doctor."

"What are the two of you on about?" Jackie asked loudly.

"Mum, shush," Rose hissed. "We've got to get back to the TARDIS, see if she can find the Doctor."

"I wouldn't mind having my blaster, either," Jack said softly.

"Blaster?" Mickey asked. "For what? There's nothing there." He waved broadly toward the Arcturians.

Jack caught his arm in the same moment Jackie jumped to her feet. "Pete?" she asked of thin air.

The air didn't answer, and she slumped bonelessly to the ground.

***

"You want people hallucinating so they won't notice when you lift the Tower of London out of the way." The worst part was, as plans went, the Doctor had heard madder. Actually, he'd come up with madder.

"They'll notice, they just won't know that it's not a hallucination, too," Tally said.

"But . . . hallucinating!" Maile said. "That can't be safe. Even if Freddy Krueger isn't coming after you, what if you hallucinate one kine so scary you get heart attack? Cora could have a mob of angry freshman chasing her inside her head!"

The Doctor winced, thinking about all the nightmare fodder traveling with him had given his partners. "Traffic accidents will be the least of it," he muttered. "Look, have you got the precise coordinates of the stasis pod?"

Kast looked affronted. "Of course. That's our crown prince in there--you think we'd lose him?"

Before the Doctor could answer, Tally said, "We have a live signal beacon, Doctor. Always have. We'd have been here sooner except for the little matter of rebuilding the Empire first." She gave him an annoyed look.

He ignored it. "My ship's a very different technology. Give me the frequency of the signal and I can get him out for you without the Tower of London having to go anywhere. But while I'm doing that, _you_ lot have to stop people hallucinating. Whatever your plan was for getting people back to normal, do it now." He glared at Tally.

She actually scooted her rolling chair a little farther from him. Glancing at Kast, she said, "I'm for it, but you have to agree, Kast. The prince is your charge."

"Your charge?" Maile asked.

"Head of the Royal Guard," Kast said with an awkward look. "Even if I've never met Crown Prince Rrtath. " He sighed and looked back at the Doctor. "The frequency's 4ε7.3βρ."

Tally got to her feet. "I'll trigger distribution of the antagonist."

The Doctor grinned. "That's the spirit. We'll take care of your prince and be back here in no time."

He and Maile left the warehouse without even an escort, let alone any guns trained on them. Fancy that. The Doctor could already see little pockets of chaos erupting in the streets as they ran toward the TARDIS. Three yobs ran past them in the other direction as if something were chasing them. From their point of view, he supposed something was. People were stopped dead on the pavements, talking to thin air, and someone had driven a Volkswagen into a fire plug. The Doctor detoured just enough as they ran to avoid the water spraying everywhere.

Beside him, Maile only just managed to keep up, breathing heavily. As they passed a double-parked lorry, it occurred to him to ask, "You're not seeing things? No monsters coming after you? No angry in-laws looking for you?"

"Giant bugs," she gasped, "but dem . . . no count. No such . . . thing . . . as giant bugs."

The inhabitants of Chitnax IV would be surprised to hear that. "Why not?" he asked as he took the last turn that would get them back to the Powell Estates.

"Physics. Square-cube law. They'd collapse . . . under their own weight. You wen park one spaceship . . . in da city?"

He opened his mouth to tell her about the time he'd spent with the Chitnaxians, but a little voice that sounded suspiciously like Rose in the back of his head said _Not now, Doctor_. "Not far now. We'll lock on to the Krriktarich prince's signal and pop right over. Can't be that long to get him out."

"Aliens. Spaceship." She shook her head. "Fo' reals. This been one plenny _pupule_ day."

When they reached the TARDIS, Maile didn't say a word. It was almost disappointing when he unlocked the doors and she didn't complain that the old girl didn't look like a spaceship. "Close the doors behind you," he said, crossing to the console and setting the TARDIS to track the beacon's frequency.

Maile carefully shut the doors behind her without taking one more step into the TARDIS. "How far away are the walls, really? she asked.

Sure enough, the frequency wasn't hard to find with the proper equipment. "How do you mean? Just what you see." He waved vaguely around the room with his free hand, keying in a safety margin from the source of the beacon so they wouldn't accidentally land on top of the poor fellow.

"Hallucinations, remember? Da walls look way far away to me, and it look like dem got giant egg sacs inside." She pointed carefully several different places, and it dawned on him that she was pointing at the roundels.

"No egg sacs, and the walls are right where you see them." He drew himself up, affronted at the disparaging look she shot him. "No, really. I can't believe I'm saying this, but . . . it's bigger on the inside."

***

"Mum! Mum!" Rose checked Jackie's pulse, even as Jack was shushing her so the Arcturians wouldn't hear.

"What are you on about?" Mickey asked angrily, wrenching his arm out of Jack's grip and dropping to one knee beside Rose.

"The Arcturians!" Jack's quiet growl sounded entirely unamused.

Pale as she was, Jackie's heart beat steadily. "What happened to her?" Mickey asked.

Rose gave a frustrated shake of her head and wished the Doctor were here. "I don't know, she just fainted. Is fainting part of it?" She looked up earnestly at Jack, saw the Arcturians again, and felt vaguely nauseous.

"Come on, we've got to get to the TARDIS," Jack said, crouching down beside them. "I'll take this end. You take her feet, Mick–"

Mickey screamed, a look of utter disbelief on his face. "But they're not real!"

Rose turned her head to follow his line of sight. She saw . . . absolutely nothing. A fine time for everyone to get sicker; she could only hope it wouldn't hit Jack until after they'd got home. "We don't have time for this. We've got to get back to the TARDIS before the Arcturians cut off our escape!"

Mickey moved over to grab Jackie's feet. "Can the TARDIS keep out zombies?"

Jack and Mickey lifted in the same moment. "We've got extrapolator shielding. It'll keep out just about anything."

"Brilliant," Mickey said.

Rose brought up the rear as they moved along far too slowly. They hadn't made it more than a hundred yards before Jackie squirmed and said, "Put me down, you bloody wankers!"

"Not so loud," Rose said in a hushed, urgent voice, even as Jack helped her mum to her feet.

"And why not? Mickey and that boyfriend of yours--"

" _Boyfriend_?" Not that Rose ever really knew what to call Jack or the Doctor when it came down to that sort of thing, but her mother wasn't even supposed to _know_.

"Less talking, more running," Jack said, grabbing Rose by the wrist and tugging at her.

Jackie carried on as though neither of them had said anything. "And here I was, worried that Doctor of yours had swept you off your feet, with his other worlds and his adventures, always putting you in danger. Never saw the handsome one who's human come home with you till now--just goes to prove he's up to no good."

Rose twisted her hand, breaking Jack's hold. "How dare you!" After everything Jack had been through, the Game Station and the Doctor's standoffishness and dying for them again on Culabree . . . "Jack's one of the best men I know! Now enough of this, we've got to get back to the TARDIS before we get captured by Arcturians."

"Or eaten by zombies," Mickey muttered.

"I don't care," Jackie said. "Got eyes, don't I? You're a couple, young lady, and don't try to tell me otherwise. And you--" She turned to glare at Jack, who didn't even notice, glancing over his shoulder at where the Arcturians had almost made it to this street. "You with your fine looks and your big smile, and not from around here, no--do you think she's goin' to stay with you? Out there in outer space, never coming back home to her mum like a good girl ought?"

Rose stamped her foot. "Enough!" She'd had it with her mother being hard on her partners, both of them. "We're not a couple, Mum--we're a trio!"

Jackie stared, her mouth hanging open.

The sound of the Arcturians on the move brought Rose back to herself. "Now let's run, we've got to get to the TARDIS. If we can't find the Doctor, we'll have to do something about the Arcturians ourselves till he shows up." She reached out blindly, her hand finding Jack's, fingers lacing through his like they belonged there . . . because they did.

The two of them ran towards the last unblocked street, and after a few seconds, she heard Jackie and Mickey start to run behind them.

It took longer than she wanted to get back to the Powell Estate, going the long way around as they kept having to dodge the Arcturian march. By the time they rounded the last corner and saw the TARDIS, Jackie and Mickey were breathing in huge, pained gasps. _Nothing like running for your life on a regular basis to get in really good shape._

As Rose and Jack pounded down the pavement, a wheezing, grinding noise split the air. Rose's stomach lurched, and she and Jack both put on an extra burst of speed.

It was no use. The TARDIS faded in front of their eyes, and was gone.


	4. Chapter 4

The Doctor stared at the exterior monitor in numb dismay as the TARDIS dematerialized. The looks on his partners' faces tore at the his hearts. Terror, they might all be used to, but this was the first time he'd seen despair. He ought just to go on and rescue the crown prince--the false bottle flies would be distributing the antagonist soon, anyway. Rose and Jack weren't going through anything different than any other human on the island.

Except the other humans on the island wouldn't remember dying. Jack's dreams about suffocating could be taking on a life of their own right now, while the Doctor, with his Time Lord biology, escaped untouched, abandoning him to it. _This is why xenoamory is such a bad idea._ Growling under his breath, the Doctor flipped the switches that would put the TARDIS into a holding pattern in the Vortex. Straightening up, he said, "Maile, I'm going to need a blood sample from you." It came out sharper than he meant it.

She didn't seem to notice as she frowned, her eyebrows drawing together. "Why? They're already dispersing the antagonist, they said."

"Yeah. Well, funny thing about that." He started toward the main corridor, checking to see that she was following. "We've got to make a little detour. I need to pick up my partners and Rose's mother and even Mickey-the-idiot, and it's bad enough having one hallucinating human to look after, I can't have five. I need to see what's in your bloodstream so I can work up an antidote."

The med bay, fortunately, managed to be the first door on the left at the moment. "Won't that take too long?" Maile asked. "Da other aliens sounded like dem was in a hurry."

He found it hard to care, not when Jack and Rose could be hallucinating a Dalek invasion. "Time machine," he said, fumbling in a drawer for something as old-fashioned as a hematograph.

"Time machine?" Maile sat up on one of the exam tables.

"There an echo in here?" He finally laid hands on the device, walking over and gesturing for her to hold out her arm.

"Figgas," she said as he placed the sampler in the bend of her elbow. "Nothing else makes sense today--why should this? Ouch."

The Doctor studied the results as the hematograph scrolled them across its tiny screen. "Of course. That would result in the increased prefrontal cortical activity, and the alpha waves were nothing compared to these theta waves . . ."

"So . . . dat mean you can make one antidote?"

He flashed her a quick grin. "Twenty minutes."

When the synthesizer had finished, he had half a dozen doses of antidote in single-use self-injecting ampoules. "Can you find that big vein in your elbow?" he asked, handing her one. As long as she could get close, the ampoules would do the rest. Jack could handle himself, but two sets of hands were better than one to take care of the other three humans.

Maile raised her unpunctured arm to look at the skin, and then pressed the business end of the ampoule to the inside of the elbow. A few seconds later, he watched as she began to visibly relax, her eyes flicking around the room as she watched something he couldn't see disappearing. "I guess so."

The fast return switch brought them back to the Powell Estates not more than thirty seconds after they left, for which precision he silently thanked his ship. He took two of the ampoules and ran to throw the doors open.

"Doctor!" Rose said, flinging herself into the TARDIS and wrapping her arms around him.

Jack was only a step or two behind her. "The Arcturians--"

"Hallucinations," the Doctor said, working one arm around Rose's back to display the ampoules in his hand. At least, they had better be hallucinations--if London really had invading Arcturians, things were about to get a bit more complicated. "I've got the antidote."

Jack took one from his hand, squeezing past them onto the main floor of the console room. Drawing back from Rose, the Doctor administered her dose. He didn't get nearly enough time to savor her look of relief, as a voice he'd expected, but still could've done without, said, "Out of the way, they're right behind us!"

That was his cue. The Doctor went back to the console, letting Rose explain to Mickey and Jackie while he called the stasis pod's coordinates up again. "Maile, do the others." He vaguely heard Jackie crying over Rose--something about her dead husband--while Mickey nattered on about zombies.

"So where are we going?" Jack's quiet voice came from much nearer at hand.

"Underground. I promised the Krriktarichs we'd go rescue their crown prince if they'd call off their bugs."

"Bugs?" He could hear the confusion in Jack's voice. "Wait a minute, are you telling me those stupid flies were responsible for the hallucinations?"

The Doctor started them on their way. "And for everybody acting drunk."

Jack automatically ran around to the opposite side of the console to man the seventh-dimensional flaps. " _Everybody_?"

"Even you." The Doctor looked up to grin at his partner. "Didn't you notice?"

Jack laughed. "Doctor, there's nothing I'd do drunk that I wouldn't do sober."

"Even that time at the Princess of Oolantia's natal feast?" The Doctor kept his voice very dry. Neither he nor Rose had blamed Jack, but they also hadn't let him forget it.

Jack looked vaguely abashed. "Okay, there's nothing I'd do drunk that I wouldn't _think_ about doing sober. Now what's this about going underground?"

The Doctor shouldered past Mickey and Jackie even as the materialization engines were still firing. When they stopped, he opened the doors on a solid wall of good English earth. "The TARDIS atomized the part we're parked in, but I had to leave some margin for error. The crown prince's stasis pod is a couple of meters that way." He pointed out the doors.

"Right. Soil compactor where we left it?" Rose asked with a sigh.

Jack looked resigned. "I'll get the shovels."

Digging didn't leave a lot of leftover breath for talking, which was a mercy, since Jackie Tyler had picked up a shovel and begun to dig straightaway, much to the Doctor's surprise. Actually, Jackie, Rose, and Mickey all seemed a little cowed, and Jack found the time between shovelfuls to dart little curious looks at Rose, so something had happened there. But at the moment, blissful silence reigned, with the exception of Maile's complaints that now she'd have to find something else to do her thesis on.

Graduate students had some things in common throughout the universe.

Then, of course, all that dirt had to be put back. "Don't want the Tower of London to collapse on account of us, now do we?" the Doctor asked as he took the newly-awakened Krriktarich lad--the kid couldn't have been more than forty semots old--away to the med bay for a quick bioscan to make sure he'd shaken off the effects of his thousand-year stasis.

***

"I don't think I've ever been so dirty in my life," Maile said. She had dirt in her hair, dirt under her fingernails, dirt inside her bra . . .

"Give it time," Rose said. She was just as filthy, and she and Jack had dug more than the rest of them. More than the Doctor, too, since he'd had to go give the alien kid a medical check.

"Hazard of traveling with the Doctor," Jack said wryly, giving her a little grin.

Maile smiled back. It was hard not to smile at Jack. He was easy on the eyes. Not that Maile would do more than look--she'd caught the way his and Rose's hands brushed when her mother wasn't looking, and Maile would swear he'd been about to squeeze the Doctor's butt once, and then thought better of it. She wasn't sure which of them he was into, but she wasn't touching that with a ten foot pole, no matter how handsome he was.

"Oh, not you, too," Mickey muttered.

Maile blinked. "Me too, what?"

He didn't answer, and no one else seemed inclined to help her out.

The Doctor had taken the alien prince out of the spaceship with him. Maile had thought about going with them, but that was when Rose and her mother had come back from deeper in the ship with cups of water, and water won out over aliens Maile had already seen. Now they were all sitting on the grating in the spaceship's front room, and she wasn't entirely sure how she'd manage to get up again.

Aliens. Spaceships. She was really in a spaceship. She wished she had the energy to look around a little before she went home. "So what happens next?"

"Showers," Jack said, with such longing in his voice that Rose and Maile both laughed, and even Rose's taciturn mother cracked a smile.

"No, really," Maile said. "I mean, there were aliens in London. You can't just hide that kind of thing."

"They always have before," Mickey said darkly.

Maile frowned and turned to look back at Jack and Rose.

"Not us," Rose said. "But somebody always seems anxious to hide it. Besides, nobody else saw them as aliens, the way you told it."

Maile made a face. "But _I'll_ always know. There really is intelligent life out there."

" _Other_ intelligent life," Jack said.

Mickey laughed. "How's the joke go? There'd better be intelligent life out there, 'cos there's bugger all down here?"

She couldn't help but giggle in return. "Something like that."

The front doors swung in, and the Doctor stepped inside, a lunatic smile on his face. That should probably worry her more than it did. "Guess what, Maile?"

"The moon is made of green cheese and we're going to make fondue?"

Rose hid her laughter behind her hand, while Jack laughed out loud. It got him a glare from the Doctor. "The Krriktarichs are so happy to have their prince back, they agreed not to recall the bugs."

"But they bite!" Rose rubbed her arm as if remembering the bug bites, but all it did was smear the dirt around.

"They don't," Maile said automatically. "Or at least, they _didn't_."

"They don't," the Doctor agreed. "Not after everybody's back to normal. No biting, no hallucinating, just harmless pollinators, not even elbowing anybody else out of their ecological niche. Don't know if they're sustainable as a population, but even if not, they should survive long enough for you to finish your research."

Maile took what felt like her first deep breath in a long time. "My thesis is saved."

The Doctor looked appallingly smug. "Thought you'd appreciate that."

"Though . . ." Rose gave the Doctor an unreadable look. "If she came with us for a while, she could study alien bugs."

Maile blinked. "There are alien bugs? I mean--on other planets, not just bugs made by these aliens?" Well, of course there would be--maybe not actual insects, but something filling that niche. Even if she couldn't write them up for publication, just the opportunity to see--

"There are," Jack said airily, "but knowing the Doctor's driving, you might get back just in time to get kicked out of your program."

"Oi!" The Doctor looked affronted.

She looked from him to Jack to Rose, trying to figure out if Jack was serious. She wasn't expecting Jackie to speak up, let alone say, "He brought my Rose back a year late once. Didn't know if she was even alive." Her tone was still subdued, but a quiet pain filled her voice.

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Save the Earth and nobody remembers, but you mistake twelve hours for twelve months just once . . ."

Maile sighed. She couldn't imagine what her own mother would do if she didn't call home for a year, but she couldn't risk it, she just couldn't. So she turned her back on distant moons and xenoentomology, and made herself smile anyway. "Oh, no way am I going to risk getting kicked out of the program. Not even for alien bugs."

The Doctor shrugged. "Up to you. You want a lift back to your lab?"

She snorted. "Will I be twelve months late?" She ignored his dirty look, reassured by Rose's smile and Jack's subtle shake of the head. "Could you get me back to my flat, instead? I'd really better make sure my flatmate's okay. I mean, who knows what English majors hallucinate? Cora could've had Shakespeare chasing her around with a butcher knife."

"Nothing easier," the Doctor said.

He was as good as his word, and she opened the front doors on a familiar alleyway just around the corner from her building. She had one foot outside when it occurred to her to ask, "Won't there be an investigation?"

"About what?" he asked.

For an alien with his own time-traveling spaceship, the Doctor could be awfully dense. "Mass hallucinations don't just happen every day. Somebody's bound to want to know what happened."

He shrugged.

"Everyone will forget," Rose said gently.

Before Maile could even protest, the Doctor nodded. "Everyone always does."

***

"Mum, I really want a shower," Rose said desperately, hoping she came off as tired and not guilty. She felt bad, trying to dodge her mum, but she needed to talk with her partners. She didn't think Jack had had a chance to tell the Doctor what she'd gone and blurted out; and Jackie might be subdued now, in the aftermath of thinking she'd seen Dad's ghost, but Rose knew it wouldn't last. She owed it to her partners to at least make sure they were all on the same page before her mum blew her top.

Jackie pressed her lips together. "There's a shower at home."

Mickey was already standing by the TARDIS doors, trying to pretend he wasn't there without actually leaving. The Doctor had fled down the main corridor as soon as they materialized in the usual spot by the Powell Estate, and Jack looked like he was only hanging around by the console to make sure Rose didn't get yelled at alone.

Rose closed her eyes. "And I have my own here. And my clothes are here, and yours are there. Please, Mum, let's both clean up, and then we'll talk. We'll even stay through till tomorrow if you want." The Doctor had been encouraging her to come home for months--she was sure he wouldn't object. Not out loud, anyway.

The look of distrust on Jackie's face cut Rose to the core. What had she ever done to deserve that look? It wasn't like it was her fault she'd gone missing for a year, and the Doctor tried to bring her back regularly, at least from Mum's point of view. Rose was an adult, and Mum couldn't expect her to stay at home all her life.

 _That's it, isn't it? I grew up. I'm not a little girl anymore, and she can't protect me, and she can't keep me here. Her flat is just a flat--it's not home anymore._

She had just opened her mouth when Jackie asked, "You really did come back because you thought I was in trouble?"

Rose nodded, shivering with the memory of that moment listening to Mickey's voicemail and not knowing what had happened.

Jackie's expression softened. "Okay. I trust you and him . . . " She waved vaguely at Jack. "To make sure Himself doesn't pull a runner. I just want to spend a few hours with my daughter while the world isn't ending."

A smile touched Rose's lips, and her heart felt lighter. "We'll be up in an hour."

The Doctor didn't seem to react much when she told him she'd told her mum. "She hasn't slapped me yet," he muttered while she scrubbed a stubborn streak of dirt off her arm with a flannel. "What about you, Jack?"

Rose rolled her eyes.

When they went up to the flat, Mickey was nowhere in sight. _Good for him. He deserves some peace and quiet--he's been stuck here, watching Mum go all weird and then just get worse. I only showed up for the end of it._ Rose tried not to feel guilty.

The four of them sat around awkwardly as the flat finally began to cool off, with Jackie asking Rose questions about where they'd been, and Jack occasionally embellishing Rose's accounts with details designed to make Jackie laugh. After a few hours and a couple of glasses of wine, it almost felt like a normal visit, only with less grumbling at the Doctor than usual.

Late in the evening, when Rose was ready for bed, Jackie encouraged her to stay in her old room. Rose bit her lip, took a deep breath, and said, "I'd rather sleep in the TARDIS, in my own bed. We'll still be here in the morning."

Jackie looked away. "Rose, I . . . In the park, I said some things . . . I don't know. We were all seeing things: you seeing aliens, Mickey seeing zombies. I thought I saw your dad, back from the dead." There was a hitch in her voice, and Rose's heart went out to her. "I saw you and Jack, and I thought you two were together, and then you told me you were both with _him_." She nodded at the Doctor, more embarrassed than Rose had ever seen her. "And I know I said things, and even though none of it was real, I'm sorry."

Oh God. No wonder she was being so weird—she thought none of it had really happened. They were off the hook. They could pretend no one had said anything, and just go back to the way things were.

 _Go back to hiding. Go back to being afraid to come home, and not knowing if I can hold Jack's hand around her, and the Doctor constantly waiting to get slapped._ Rose swallowed hard. "But we are," she said.

Jackie blinked.

"Together. The three of us."

Her mouth hanging open a little, Jackie looked around the room, her eyes going from Rose to the two men. "You took her away from me. The two of you. I trusted you--"

"No, Mum, you don't get to blame them. This is about _me_. _My_ choice." Rose got up and walked over to her mother, kneeling beside Jackie's chair so she didn't tower over her. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner, and I'm sorry you don't like it, and I'm sorry I can't stay here and be the person you always expected me to be."

Jackie's eyes were full of tears. "You were my little girl . . ."

Rose swallowed against the lump in her throat. "And now I'm not? I'm not a bad person, Mum, don't look at me like that. I just fell in love."

Jackie looked at the Doctor again, and then at Jack. "You're a bad influence." The accusatory look in her eyes almost overpowered her air of disappointment, but not quite.

Rose ran her hands through her hair and found herself tugging at it. "Mum--"

"I like being a bad influence," Jack said calmly, with none of the usual flirtatious challenge in his voice, "but there's nothing bad about people who love each other deciding they want to be with each other. Don't you dare try to convince her that's wrong."

Choking back a giggle that might almost have been a sob, Rose smiled at him.

The Doctor's voice was exceptionally mild. "Sooner or later, she's got to make her own choices, no matter how much you don't like them." Something in his tone made Rose shiver without knowing why.

Jackie turned back to her. "I suppose I have to live with that. If I tell you otherwise, you can just go away in that spaceship, and I might never see you again."

"I would _never_ ," Rose said. But she thought about the months she'd let pass since the last time she'd come back to London, and all the chances she'd had, and how much easier it had been to just . . . not have this conversation.

Jackie's arms went around her so fast, Rose ended up trapped in her hug. "You'll be here in the morning?"

Rose managed not to squirm. "Promise."

Her mother set her back at arm's length, and Rose breathed a sigh of relief until Jackie said, "Don't you get pregnant--I'm too young to be a grandmother." Like Rose was twelve or something.

So much blood rushed to her face, Rose didn't know how there could be any left in her feet. Somewhere behind her, Jack said, "Don't worry, we--"

Rose whimpered.

"Shut it, Jack," the Doctor interrupted, before Jack could start discussing futuristic contraceptive implants with her mother. "Just shut it."


	5. Chapter 5

Rose made it all the way into the lift before her head swam and her knees suddenly buckled. Her partners both reached for her, the Doctor getting his arms under hers and holding her close while Jack stroked her hair and said soothing things that flowed in one ear and out the other.

She'd really done it. Mum knew that it wasn't just friendship with the Doctor and Jack. Mickey's accusations back in Cardiff about what might really be happening in the TARDIS had become true, and now she'd admitted it to her mother. And Jackie was . . .

Not okay with it. Not at all. But she hadn't yelled or called Rose a slag or wondered where she'd gone wrong as a mother--at least not out loud.

"I'm okay, I'm okay," Rose mumbled, trying to get her feet under her as the lift doors opened. In the end, she made it to the TARDIS on her own, with just the Doctor's hand under her elbow to help her when she stumbled, and Jack hovering off to one side, looking concerned but not touching her.

Because they couldn't, in this time, not all three of them, not even if they won her mum over. Go far enough into the future and it didn't matter, and on alien worlds, it wasn't like they knew human social norms anyway. But here in the London she'd grown up in, a woman with two men was a slut.

And now, her mother knew. "Oh my god. I did it," she moaned as she stepped into the console room.

"You did." For all Jack's concern, he still sounded pleased.

"Thought that went reasonably well," the Doctor said, guiding them through the console room and down the main corridor. "No shouting. No slapping."

"We caught her in a weak moment," Rose said wryly. She felt mostly recovered from her sudden faintness. All the same, she was only too glad to reach their bedroom. It would be good to lie down.

She stopped a pace away from the bed, staring at it. They'd never made it to bed after their last adventure, going straight to the Powell Estate. The black duvet hung half off the bed, the bedclothes still rumpled from . . . well, she could hardly say this morning, she'd probably been up for twenty-four hours. The bed still smelled faintly of sex. "I'm sleeping with two men." Her face felt numb.

Jack snaked an arm around her waist. "Are you that tired? Because I'd love to do more than just sleep right now."

The Doctor snorted a laugh.

Rose looked from one of them to the other, wondering why _she_ felt like the alien. "My mum knows I'm down here right now. She knows I'm having sex." Her blush drove the numbness away, and now her face felt like it was on fire.

Jack let go of her. He flipped the duvet back up on the bed and sat in front of her, taking her hands in his own. "Is this the first time? I mean, I know things would have been different from where I grew up, but you had boyfriends before. Wouldn't your mother have known you were having sex with them?"

She closed her eyes. She'd never worried about what Jackie thought she might be doing with Mickey or Jimmy, and Mum had never looked so disapproving over either one of them--though she hadn't cared for Jimmy, for reasons that didn't make sense to Rose until he was gone. "It's not the same. It's not the sex, it's that it's both of you."

The Doctor's hands settled on her shoulders, a familiar, comforting weight. "Don't have to, you know. We can just go to bed. Tomorrow, we'll be gone."

"Or _you_ can just go to bed," Jack said, flashing a lascivious grin at the Doctor and waggling his eyebrows.

Rose wasn't sure if she wanted to laugh or hit him. "Oh, I see how it is. Now I'm to sit on the side?"

Jack tugged her sideways into his lap. "I'd rather you sit here."

"Incorrigible," the Doctor said, an amused note in his voice.

Rose leaned her head against Jack's shoulder and looked back up at the Doctor. She sighed. "It doesn't matter, does it? She's going to think what she wants to think, and I've got to face her over breakfast tomorrow no matter what."

The Doctor shrugged. "Unless you want to leave before that after all."

She glared. "I told her we'd stay for breakfast. We're staying for . . . breakfast . . ." She lost her train of thought as Jack's fingers slipped under her shirt.

The ghost of a smile touched the Doctor's lips. "See? Nothing's changed after all."

***

Mickey sprawled headlong on the pavement, backpack and all. He swore under his breath, pushed himself back onto his knees with hands he'd just scraped bloody, and looked down. Damn--he'd been in such a hurry, he hadn't got his shoelaces tied tight, and not only had he tripped himself on one, a quick inspection showed him that he'd snapped it, too. He stuffed the ends back inside his trainer and went back to running, a little lopsided now because he didn't want to fall again, what with the loose shoe.

As he rounded the corner, he saw Jackie still hugging Rose, with the Doctor leaning against the side of the TARDIS, a bored expression on his face while he and Jack looked on. Thank god--he'd been worried he might have missed them, and then not only would Rose be off on her own with Himself and Captain Flash when she deserved better, Mickey would also have to face the wrath of Jackie Tyler.

"And _call_ me," he heard Jackie say as she released Rose. "I know that phone of yours works wherever you go. Use it."

"I'll try, Mum." Rose sounded annoyed, like they'd been trying to leave for a while.

"Sorry, got hung up at the garage," Mickey called as he got close. "Had to explain to my manager." Who'd been willing to let him go once Mickey had explained his ex-girlfriend was going traveling with two blokes, and he thought they planned to take advantage of her. Now for the big question--whether the Doctor's offer was still open. "You got room for one more, boss?"

The Doctor's eyebrows rose, his face neutral. Rose turned to look at Mickey, the look on her face caught somewhere between a smile and a sneeze as he came to a stop, panting.

Great, that's all I need. If Rose is against it, there's no way he'll ever say yes. What if she wants to be all alone with her two boyfriends?

Two boyfriends--and there was the trouble. Back in Cardiff, he hadn't really believed it. Yesterday, she'd said it and he'd thought he'd imagined it--a nightmare out of his own worst fears, like the zombies. But then Jackie had called him up last night in a panic saying it was really true, and Rose was leaving with them in the morning, and who knew what kind of terrible places they'd take her to or what kind of nonsense people got up to on other planets. For all Jackie knew, it was all man-eating aliens and outer space orgies--they'd already been leading her astray, or she wouldn't be with both of them.

For all of Mickey, there'd been plenty of man-eating aliens on Earth, and he knew the Doctor would always try to save Rose. But Jackie might be right about the blokes--certainly the Rose Mickey'd gone to school with and dated would have known better. And he still didn't trust Captain Jack as far as he could throw him--especially not when it came to taking care of her. _Someone_ ought to be along who didn't have any priority except Rose when it all went pear-shaped.

Rose sighed, but she was smiling now. "Can he come along, Doctor? It'd be fun to show my best mate some of what's out there." As she spoke, Mickey caught Jackie relaxing, even if nobody else did.

"There's always room for one more," Jack said, leching all over Mickey, Rose, the Doctor . . . and maybe even Jackie. It seemed like an all-purpose flirt.

"Oi! Jack!" Rose complained.

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "I suppose," he said. "You goin' to keep an eye on him, Rose?"

Mickey raised his hand. "Excuse me. Standing right here."

"Mickey's a good lad," Jackie said. "I'm sure he won't need looking after."

Rose shrugged. "We all watch out for each other, yeah? And it's not like he's--" She stopped suddenly, and Jack raised his eyebrows at her. "We'll be fine," she said firmly. Mickey wondered what she'd been going to say before she'd thought the better of it.

"Well, come on, then. Enough standing around." The Doctor disappeared through the open TARDIS doors. Rose grinned and followed him, Jack giving her bum an appreciative look as he trailed after.

Mickey stopped outside of the console room, swallowing hard as he looked in. He was really going to do this. He felt sick to his stomach.

"Well, go on!" Jackie hissed.

Mickey looked over his shoulder at her. "Tell me again why I'm going, and not you?"

She closed her eyes, a sad look he couldn't quite make sense of on her face. "I want her safe, and that means safe from the kind of hurt she'll get being seen with two blokes, not just safe from what else is out there. And the more I tell her so, the tighter she'll hold onto them. Because I'm her mum."

"Mickey, you coming?" Rose called, leaning her bum back against the edge of the console and grinning at him, the tip of her tongue caught between her teeth. It was that look that always used to make him want to get her into the bedroom, but she hadn't been his girl in a long time.

Which didn't mean he wouldn't look out for her. Jackie gave him a little shove.

"Right." He stepped inside and turned around, giving Jackie what he hoped was a reassuring smile before he closed the doors.

***

Rose suggested Saturn, and the Doctor rolled his eyes and called it a milk run. Jack suggested the twenty-fourth century, when they'd still had a viewing platform for the rings.

Rose thought the dark circles under Jack's eyes had more to do with the Doctor giving in than anything else. Last night's nightmare had been a doozy. She didn't think he'd gone back to sleep afterward.

Saturn turned out to be just what they needed. Nothing unusual happened, Mickey and Rose got to play tourist, and Rose thought Jack had even dozed for a few minutes here and there, during the little documentary about the geophysics (or whatever you called them for a gas planet) of Saturn or leaning against the Doctor's shoulder while the two of them sat and waited on a bench as Rose took a few holographs of Mickey in front of one of the viewing windows.

It helped Mickey, too, to see the three of them together and not pretending they weren't. Oh, he scowled a bit at the way Jack flirted, and he raised his eyebrows at Rose when he turned around and saw the blokes being physically affectionate with each other. But except for reminding Rose that she really had been born in the dark ages from her partners' point of view, he seemed okay.

Just as well, since Rose was sure the Doctor would use the randomizer tomorrow and land them in the middle of some revolution or natural disaster.

Back aboard the TARDIS that evening, Rose left Mickey on his own with directions to the screening room and the library--or at least where they'd been the last time she checked. She'd shown him the kitchen when he'd picked out a bedroom this morning, and it was always off the main corridor, between his room and the console room, so, he ought to be able to find it.

Back in the console room, the Doctor was puttering (not that she'd ever call it that where he could hear) while Jack sat sprawled in the captain's chair. He looked up hopefully as she walked in. "Hot tub?" he suggested.

Hot water and her naked partners? Rose grinned. "I could go for that."

"Not a good place to fall asleep, lad," the Doctor pointed out.

Jack smirked. "With the two of you there, I won't be falling asleep."

The Doctor stopped fiddling with the console and turned his head to roll his eyes at Jack. "Hopeless, you," he said.

Rose took Jack's hand in her own and tugged at it. "He has help. Are you coming or not?"

The TARDIS had a hot tub in the gym, and another in with the swimming pool, but Jack led them down the lesser-used corridors to one at the edge of the evergreen forest Rose meant to explore someday, to see if it really was as vast as it seemed. It was a brightly lit night in the forest room, and Rose had no trouble enjoying the view as she and her partners undressed beneath the light of two moons--one purple, one orange. They left their clothes on the rocks by the entrance archway and climbed the few wooden steps up to the edge of the tub.

The hot water was heavenly, easing knots Rose thought she'd had in her shoulders since she'd got Mickey's voice mail about her mum. Jack insisted on running his toes up the inside of the Doctor's leg until the Doctor splashed him. Then he spluttered and laughed and pulled Rose into his lap instead.

She wasn't about to splash him for that, or for the way his hands stroked and teased. It did seem a bit one-sided, though. "Not fair." She wiggled in his grasp, turning until she could straddle his lap and rubbing up against his erection while claiming a kiss.

Jack groaned into her mouth. "Better?" he asked when she came up for air, sliding his hands down to cup her bum.

She heard movement through the water and smiled as the Doctor's cooler skin pressed up against the length of her back, bracketing her between her partners. "Mmm. Loads." She turned her head to collect a kiss from him, and then leaned to one side just enough to bite the spot where Jack's neck joined his shoulder. Jack's gasp cut off suddenly as the Doctor's mouth claimed his own.

A foot crunched on pine needles. "Rose, where'd you say the library--" Mickey's voice cut off abruptly. "Ahk! Sorry!"

She craned her neck around just in time to see Mickey disappear around the corner into the corridor. The Doctor called after him, "Main corridor, two rights and a left!"

Groaning, Rose slumped back against Jack, burying her face in his shoulder.

"He couldn't have seen much," the Doctor tried to comfort her.

Jack goosed her. "More time in the bedroom. I approve."

She sighed. "This is going to take some getting used to."


	6. Epilogue

"What did you _do_ to them?" Mickey stared at the crowd of slender green aliens and their improvised weapons.

"It wasn't me!" Jack said, scanning the steep drop into the quarry behind them. "It was the Doctor--"

"Does it matter?" the Doctor called as he bolted up to them. "Run!"

Rose took Jack's hand and the pair of them followed the Doctor, crunching down the gravel switchbacks. Mickey looked along the edges of the quarry, trying to find another way out.

The oncoming mob, already stirred to anger, began to boil.

"Mickey, now!" Jack yelled, suddenly at his elbow again.

"But--" Jack grabbed his wrist and all but yanked his arm out of its socket, and Mickey ran.

  
[   
](http://wilde-stallyn.livejournal.com/49356.html)   


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't forget to go [tell Wylde_Stallyn how awesome the art is](http://wilde-stallyn.livejournal.com/49356.html)!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Polyamory Big Bang art for Canaan's Judgement](https://archiveofourown.org/works/325417) by [wilde_stallyn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wilde_stallyn/pseuds/wilde_stallyn)




End file.
